In chemical biology

Chemical biology

Chemical biology is a scientific discipline spanning the fields of chemistry and biology that involves the application of chemical techniques and tools, often compounds produced through synthetic chemistry, to the study and manipulation of biological systems. This is a subtle difference from...

 and biomolecular engineering, rational design is the strategy of creating new molecules with a certain functionality, based upon the ability to predict how the molecule's structure will affect its behavior through physical models. This can be done either from scratch or by making calculated variations on a known structure, and is usually contrasted with directed evolution

Directed evolution

thumb|250px|right|An example of a possible round to evolve a protein based fluorescent sensor for a specific analyte using two consecutive FACS sortings...

. Applications of rational design include:

• Protein design
  Protein design
  Protein design is the design of new protein molecules, either from scratch or by making calculated variations on a known structure. The use of rational design techniques for proteins is a major aspect of protein engineering....
  
  
• Nucleic acid design
  Nucleic acid design
  Nucleic acid design is the process of generating a set of nucleic acid base sequences that will associate into a desired conformation. Nucleic acid design is central to the fields of DNA nanotechnology and DNA computing...
  
  
• Drug design
  Drug design
  Drug design, also sometimes referred to as rational drug design or structure-based drug design, is the inventive process of finding new medications based on the knowledge of the biological target...